A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [55]
“You’re truly angry with me, aren’t you?” Salamander wiped his smile away.
“Ye gods! You promised me you were going to devote yourself to your studies, but you’ve kept finding one cursed distraction after another. Now this! And there’s the lass to consider, too, you know. She’s but a child,”
“Old enough to have been married for years in Deverry.”
“This isn’t Deverry.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that. Jill, is it me you’re angry with, or is it everything? The delay, I mean. We’ve been wandering round Bardek for months and months, finding but a trace here and there of the things you want to know.”
Jill took a deep breath and considered.
“There’s that, indeed. Patience has never been my right-hand weapon, has it?”
“And now glorious Luvilae has been but another dead trail, a road with no ending, a house with no doors, a—”
“One wretched image is enough, please. But there’s still that bookseller in Inderat Noa. I have hopes of him.”
“I suppose you’ll want to head back there straightaway.”
“I was thinking of it, truly. Why not? Oh, of course. The lass. I suppose you want to spend a few days sniffing round her.”
“How crudely you put things!” He grinned, tucking his thumbs into his belt and leaning back against the wall. “But I did think I might take a stroll in the marketplace tonight. No doubt her troupe performs in the evening, when it’s cooler.”
When it came time for the show, it seemed at first that the gods were going to grant them a decent take. In the cool of the evening a big crowd gathered in front of their improvised stage, set up between two trees to support the slack wire. As the men raised the huge standing torches and Marka ran round lighting them, she noticed a number of fairly well-dressed people in the crowd, the kind who looked like they weren’t above throwing some small change to a street performer. Best of all, her father was wide-awake and alert, laughing and joking with the troupe as they gathered backstage. The first turns went well, too, her own juggling, the apprentice tumblers, and Keeta’s routine with the flaming torches. When the troupe broke to sling the slack wire, coins came in a copper shower, but here and there Marka plucked a silver one.
With great ceremony the flute boy and the drummer sat down cross-legged at the edge of the stage, paused a moment, then began the music for the centerpiece of the show, the slack rope routine. Wiping her face on a scarf, Marka stood off to one side and watched the crowd more than the show. Until Orima came along, the slack rope had been her own turn, one she’d learned as a small child from her mother and at which she was particularly skilled. A cow prancing on a string—that’s our Rimi, she thought to herself. Then she saw, standing off toward the back, the barbarian juggler. Her heart thudded, her fingers tightened on the scarf, and she couldn’t understand why in the least, except, perhaps, that he was so handsome. All at once he noticed her watching and smiled right at her. Blushing furiously, hating herself for it, she turned away.
Dressed in a brief but flowing silk tunic over a loincloth, Orima was just approaching the wire-wound rope, which hung loosely between the twin wooden towers of the mounting platforms, a good six feet above the stage itself. With a big smile for the crowd she climbed up and did a back flip on the platform. She bowed—several times too many in Marka’s estimation—then took the balance pole and leapt to the rope for a graceful half run across, balancing in the middle. When the crowd cheered and clapped, she executed a good turn, and ran back to the platform so lightly and easily that the crowd yelled in delight. Marka could practically taste her own anger, a black bile in her mouth. As Orima mounted the rope again, she hesitated for the barest second, just the split of a moment too long. The rope swung, then snapped back; her lead foot groped and grabbed—too late. With a shriek